Wednesday, August 28, 2013

U.S. Neocon Hawks Take Flight Over Syria

In an echo of the tactics they used to promote U.S. intervention in the Balkans, Iraq and Libya, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives published a letter Tuesday urging President Barack Obama to go far beyond limited military strikes against Syria in retaliation for its government's alleged use last week of chemical weapons that reportedly killed hundreds of people.

Signed by 66 former government officials and "foreign policy experts" – almost all of them strongly pro-Israel neo-conservatives – the letter, which was released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), called for Washington "and other willing nations [to] consider direct military strikes against the pillars of the Assad regime" as part of more ambitious strategy to support "moderate" Syrian rebels and dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Any military action should aim to ensure that the government of President Bashar al-Assad will be unable to use chemical weapons and should deter or destroy its "airpower and other conventional military means of committing atrocities against civilian non-combatants," according to the letter.

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Congress Owned by UnAmerican Foreign Interests

"Conservatives are accustomed to liberals not understanding the zoology of our movement. But the use and abuse of the term 'neoconservative' has exceeded even the high allowance for cliché and ignorance generally afforded to those who write or talk about conservatism from outside the conservative ant farm. In fact, neoconservative has become a Trojan Horse for vast arsenal of ideological attacks and insinuations. For some it means Jewish conservative. For others it means hawk. A few still think it means squishy conservative or ex-liberal. And a few don't even know what the word means, they just think it makes them sound knowledgeable when they use it."